Ta-Nehisi Coates

A lot of the discussion around this episode focuses on would Joan really do this, and hey, she's in a desperate situation because she has to care for her child as a single parent. Yes, it's true that Joan is a single parent, and it's true that that's a difficult situation. Except Joan hasn't brought that up. She hasn't talked about her fears about raising Kevin alone and hasn't seemed all that stressed about money (or alimony?), to the point that she declines Roger's attempts to pay off-the-books child support. 

She didn't sleep with scuzzy car guy just because she was desperate for the stability. She slept with him because she's in a liminal phase. Liminalty is the scary in-between times in our lives, the weird time when we're not who we used to be but we're not quite who we're going to be. Joan's in a classic -- classic! -- liminal phase right now. 

She's not the office vixen anymore, but she hasn't really transitioned to doting mother. And to top it all off, she's in the middle of a particularly traumatic divorce. Joan doesn't know who she is anymore; her entire identity is jeopardized.

In the wake of Mr. Awlaki's death, some administration officials, including the attorney general, argued that the Justice Department's legal memo should be made public. In 2009, after all, Mr. Obama had released Bush administration legal opinions on interrogation over the vociferous objections of six former C.I.A. directors. 

 This time, contemplating his own secrets, he chose to keep the Awlaki opinion secret. "Once it's your pop stand, you look at things a little differently," said Mr. Rizzo, the C.I.A.'s former general counsel. 

 Mr. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director and now an adviser to Mr. Obama's Republican challenger, Mr. Romney, commended the president's aggressive counterterrorism record, which he said had a "Nixon to China" quality. 

But, he said, "secrecy has its costs" and Mr. Obama should open the strike strategy up to public scrutiny. "This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that's not sustainable," Mr. Hayden said. "I have lived the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos, and it ain't a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. safe."

You have Martin Luther King's statue in your office, but you are sending these unmanned drones out, and bombs are dropping on innocent people. That's not a small thing. That's not a small thing. We know from historic examples that if you engage in a certain kind of foreign policy it eats at your soul on the domestic front.

"I accept responsibility for and regret my thoughtless, insensitive, immature, stupid and childish choices that I made on Sept. 19, 2010, and Sept. 21, 2010," Mr. Ravi said. "My behavior and actions, which at no time were motivated by hate, bigotry, prejudice or desire to hurt, humiliate or embarrass anyone, were nonetheless the wrong choices and decisions. I apologize to everyone affected by those choices."

"I don't want my son to play football," Scott said. "I play football so he won't have to. With what is going on, I don't know if it's really worth it. . . . I don't want to have to deal with him getting a concussion and what it would be like later in life." 

Keeping kids inside a protective bubble has plenty of risks, too -- there are a lot more kids struggling with health problems related to obesity than there are kids struggling with health problems related to football -- but Scott said his 7-year-old son will get his exercise through non-contact sports. 

"He can play baseball," Scott said. "I really don't want him boxing, either, even though he wants to box. I won't let him box. It's not worth it. The most important thing for me is him being around and me being able to spend a long time with him and I'm sure, at the end of the day, all the things I'm able to buy him from playing football, he'd much rather have me."

But as impressed as I was by the look of the thing, I'm pretty sure I'll be skipping it. Gatsby, to me, will always be the ultimate study in the oxymoronic—a small book about a really big idea. That contrast—brevity and The Great American Novel, Fitzgerald's small world and the grand idea of American social-climbing—is what I come back to in the book. That, and of course, the characters.

Gatsby is a book that has come to mean something to people (or perhaps simply to Hollywood directors) that sometimes feels disconnected from the book itself. Fitzgerald's great trick was to write about two people who wanted each other, but not write a love story. Of course I root for Daisy to leave Tom every time. But my rooting is wrong, and by the end of the book, Fitzgerald has really shown you why. Daisy is the one that got away—except you have no idea what that means. That "one" isn't some better future. She is a person—a indelibly flawed American. Like you.

Gatsby is something I haven't seen recently in American film—a kind of anti-melodrama, an anti-love story. Perhaps it's my present biases, but I'd have loved to see the French take this one on.

PARKER 

 All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me. 

 INTERVIEWER 

 What, then, would you say is the source of most of your work? 

 PARKER 

 Need of money, dear.

INTERVIEWER 

Do you think economic security an advantage to the writer? 

PARKER 

Yes. Being in a garret doesn't do you any good unless you're some sort of a Keats. The people who lived and wrote well in the twenties were comfortable and easy living. They were able to find stories and novels, and good ones, in conflicts that came out of two million dollars a year, not a garret. As for me, I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money. I hate almost all rich people, but I think I'd be darling at it. At the moment, however, I like to think of Maurice Baring's remark: "If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom he gives it." I realize that's not much help when the wolf comes scratching at the door, but it's a comfort.

"I think everyone should be happy. I think a fool is going to go against same sex marriage at this point. The President...look how long it took him to say he was for same sex marriages. You understand? I'm up for it. If everyone else is for it, then hey, to each his own. I don't have personal feelings towards it because I'm not involved in that lifestyle. I want people to be happy. It makes for everything to be better..."

"So in process, we need organizations for straight men. We do. We need organizations for straight men in the case you've been on the elevator and somebody decides they want to grab your little buns. Times are changing. Those organizations are set up for at one point they were being attacked for those choices. Now its completely different. Obviously [homosexuality] is more socially accepted."

57% of Maryland voters say they're likely to vote for the new marriage law this fall, compared to only 37% who are opposed. That 20 point margin of passage represents a 12 point shift from an identical PPP survey in early March, which found it ahead by a closer 52/44 margin. 

The movement over the last two months can be explained almost entirely by a major shift in opinion about same-sex marriage among black voters. Previously 56% said they would vote against the new law with only 39% planning to uphold it. Those numbers have now almost completely flipped, with 55% of African Americans planning to vote for the law and only 36% now opposed. 

The big shift in attitudes toward same-sex marriage among black voters in Maryland is reflective of what's happening nationally right now. A new ABC/Washington Post poll finds 59% of African Americans across the country supportive of same-sex marriage. A PPP poll in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania last weekend found a shift of 19 points in favor of same-sex marriage among black voters.

[Reverend Emmett C]. Burns enjoyed the first spasms of repeal campaign coverage. He went on CNN and promised not to vote for Obama -- he was just so angry about the gay marriage "evolution." Less than a week later, he told National Review that he'd evolved. He'd back Obama anyway. It's not that easy to stake a position against the president and try to hold on to the black vote.

There are two other states where similar things could take place. Washington will likely be voting on whether to uphold that state's legislation granting marriage equality, and voters in Maine look like they'll be enacting marriage equality.

A majority of Kentucky's 120 counties voted against Obama in the state's Democratic presidential primary, opting instead for "uncommitted." Big margins in Louisville and Lexington saved the president from the supreme embarrassment of actually losing the state, not that his overall 57.9 to 42.1 percent victory is anything to write home about...

Chalking this up only to race may be an oversimplification, although there was exit poll data in 2008 that indicated it was an explicit factor for a sizable chunk of voters. Perhaps Obama's race is one of several markers (along with his name, his background, and the never-ending Muslim rumors, his status as the "liberal" candidate in 2008) that low-income white rural voters use to associate him with a national Democratic Party that they believe has been overrun by affluent liberals, feminists, minorities, secularists and gays - people and groups whose interests are being serviced at the expense of their own.

But although no one doubts that race may be a factor, exit polling suggests that the opposition to Obama goes beyond it. And seasoned political observers who have studied the politics of these areas say race may be less of a problem for Obama than the broader cultural disconnect that many of these voters feel with the Democratic Party. 

"Race is definitely a factor for some Texans but not the majority," said former congressman Charles W. Stenholm (D-Tex.). "The most significant factor is the perception/reality that the Obama administration has leaned toward the ultra-left viewpoint on almost all issues."

Judge Berman's sentencing decision may well disappoint M.B., as well as the Clementi family. They didn't ask for a particular sentence, saying they trusted the judge to get it right. Did he? I think the answer is yes, if you pay attention to the judge's reasoning. He faulted Ravi's lack of remorse and humility, saying, "I haven't heard you apologize once." The judge also said, "You can't expunge the misconduct and the pain you have caused." 

But Judge Berman rightly found that Ravi is probably not at risk to commit another similar offense. He took into account Ravi's young age--18 at the time of the spying--and his previously clean record. And Judge Berman also was right, I think, to say that while what Ravi did was wrong, he didn't contemplate the harm his misconduct would cause. And Judge Berman correctly pointed out that in the New Jersey cases in which a conviction for a bias crime has led to a long prison sentence, the bias was related to a crime of violence. A victim was beaten with a metal rod, for example. There was no violence at issue here, however unsavory the webcam spying was, and it's an important distinction that's worth preserving. Though I found myself more torn about the light sentence Ravi received today than I expected, I agree with the gay rights activists who have questioned what purpose a harsh prison sentence for Ravi would serve.

...this unmet desire is a reminder of something that the Ravi case seemed almost designed to illustrate: criminal law is not always the perfect means for reaching political or social goals.

You up against -- Jesus Freaks, formin corporations  with Young Republicans 

Indelible NATO force hidden agenda, puppet governments 

I'm lovin it. Keep the people guessin who I'm runnin with 

Control the population and hide behind sacred covenants

You just stepped into the spectrum of paranoid word rainbows 

Thinkin you sick with a sihlouette, burn transit cop out his plain clothes 

I'm America. This is where the pain grows like poppies 

In a Field of Dreams I paid for, I'll burn it down if operated sloppily. Copy?

"We're finally seeing a point where companies realize that they're not going to create the next great MMO by just copying what's come before," said Christopher Lye, global brand director at ArenaNet, who believes the definition of an MMO has come to mean games that follow a similar quest and combat structure to World of Warcraft. 

"'MMO' is a platform and set of technologies, not a game design model - and we've barely scratched the surface of what's possible ... Honestly, I think the problem is that there's been a lack of change in MMO design and that Guild Wars 2 is a reaction to that."

ArenaNet is also breaking what Lye called the "holy trinity" of MMO combat -- tank, healer and DPS -- and omitting a dedicated healing class all together, giving some healing abilities to each profession. The designers hope this will "free players up from that dependency, so you see a lot more creativity in party make-up and tactics," said Lye.

I don't think this Beenie Man's apology, which you can see above, is much of one. I'm in sympathy with the point about being young--especially for artists. A lot of us come from a place where being out is hazardous to your health. Then you go out into a world where gays are integrated into everyday life and you feel a little ignorant. Of course Beenie didn't say that. I don't even think he actually apologized. But I do think, taken with T.I.'s statement last week, you are actually seeing something new here--shame. People are becoming ashamed of being labeled homophobic.

When you think about bigotry there's a point where folks will just out and out express the most hateful thoughts--think Ben Tillman advocating lynching from the Senate floor. They usually do this because they have a crowd behind them. Sometimes they deeply believe what they're saying, and other times are simply looking for someone weaker to smack down.

So it's fine to use gay slurs, to urge violence against gays as long as there's a crowd that finds this either acceptable, or not particularly lamentable. The black past is filled with incidents of violence perpetrated by whites--not as racial terrorism--but simply as hedonistic malevolence.

It's Friday night and you've been drinking. You're looking for some amusement. You don't really have much in the way of political thoughts. But there are certain groups which the crowd views as outside of society. When they are victimized, the crowd may not always cheer you on, but you can count on them looking the other way.

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Get a gun, a mask, an escape route

Some duct-tape'll make em take you to the house.

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I don't care. I don't see what the big deal is, why some people are so against it. Why would you be so against it if it doesn't affect you or your lifestyle? I'm not in that world and it doesn't affect me if they did or they didn't... I don't care enough one way or another. If something doesn't affect you, you should not take a strong position against it.